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“We’ve Just Got To Knock Out That Knucklehead Stuff”

June 11th, 2019

Film study

Really cool breakdown here.

Former Bucs quarterback and Bill Belicheat assistant Chris Simms is doing one helluva job working for NBC Sports. In addition to his duties as analyst for Notre Dame football, he works weekday mornings as co-host/sidekick for the creator, curator and overall guru of Pro Football Talk, the great Mike Florio, on “PFT Live” seen by intelligent football fans on NBC Sports Network.

Then there is Simms’ podcast, “Unbuttoned.” Basically, Simms is being paid very good cash to talk football all day long. In Joe’s eyes, that’s living.

Periodically, Simms will pump out some video, too. In this video, part of his “Simms QB School,” he breaks down the mechanics of America’s Quarterback, Pro Bowler Jameis Winston.

Now a lot of folks hammer Jameis for his windup. Not Simms. He likes it a lot and explains why it works for him. However, that style does sometimes come with a price.

Simms is a big believer in Jameis. Well, except for a couple of things.

“All in all, Jameis Winston is good, is special,” Simms said. “We’ve just got to knock out some of that knucklehead stuff Jameis Winston does every few weeks that makes us all scratch our head and go, ‘What the heck was that?'”

This segment was a little kinder than the QB rankings where both Florio and
Simms discussed his ranking of Jameis at 26 if memory serves on Pro Fotball Talk.
Their back and forth is as entertaining as it is insightful.

Lord C… Jameis doesn’t play defense… my criticism of Jameis is when he is on the field not the sideline Of course a better defense will help the play calling as will a better run game. Still brings the conversation back to the repeated mistakes Jameis makes running the offense, despite the stats you and others blinded my your wishing, Jameis is not a play maker so he better learn to be a very good game manager

I don’t think Winston has been amazing or an elite QB, but him / the pass game are quite literally the ONLY things that have been consistently decent about this team in 8 years. They are the ONLY things that have actually improved since he got here and really the only things he can effect as a QB for the most part.

The whole point of laying those stats out is how much football is a TEAM game as Defense Rules puts it a lot.

We can look into our own division to see this…

From 2012-2016 Drew Brees was a loser 4 of 5 years. 7-9 record (pretty similar to 6.75 AVG Winston wins hm) 4 of 5 years.

A HOF QB.

Why?

Because his TEAM sucked. Because his defense was horrifically bad and they didn’t have the type of dynamic run game they have now.

Did Drew Brees become better for 2017-2018?

Hell no. The Saints got better because they were able to build a dominant O-line (top 5), run game (top 5), and competent defense (14th last year, 10th the year prior).

Doesn’t matter what young QB we would have had 2015-2018 the results would have been the same or even worse for all we know. A guy like Jared Goff would probably mentally be destroyed and out of the league if he was drafted here for example lol

Lord C……great breakdown but I disagree that 2015 was a fluke for our running game. We made a coaching change that off-season and IMO is the reason we plummeted. Aside from Logan Mankins the roster was the same.

Dirk took over and made bad changes. I don’t know much about run game coordination or blocking schemes but I bet that had a lot to do with it………………What was easy to notice was that he changed our personal packages and our formations. In 2015 we consistently line up in pro formation with two backs behind the QB. Under Dirk that went away and we only used 1 RB most of the time. This probably made us more predictable especially when Doug ran most everything between the tackles…………Furthermore poor decisions were made with our personal like trying to use Simms as a bellcow runner or lining him up as a slot reciever(where he did next to nothing).

Dirk’s use of Chuck Simms has always bothered me. He took a, not great, but highly productive player and completely nullified all of his best abilities. And never once did he ever go back to running so.e of the plays that Simms excelled at……….My best hope is that Ronald Jones is a better version of Simms that Dirk tryed to use the same way. Let better coaching get a hand on Ronald and maybe we will all be pleasantly surprised……..It would not be unprecedented and from what I have heard Dirk missused RBs in other cities he had coached & they performed better when he was gone.

” Still brings the conversation back to the repeated mistakes Jameis makes running the offense, despite the stats you and others blinded my your wishing, Jameis is not a play maker so he better learn to be a very good game manager”

I don’t see how that brings the conversation there at all.

It should bring the conversation to

“why are we even talking about the QB as the problem when that’s the ONLY thing that’s improved around here in 8 years?” or

“why are we even talking about the QB as the problem when literally ANY QB would have a losing record with bottom 1/3 defense, bottom 1/3 run game, and bottom 2 special teams as evidenced by basically all of NFL history?”

Not sure what you’re getting at with the “not a play maker” thing suggesting he’s a game manager / needs to just get better at that.

He’s been one of the bigger play makers in the league in terms of highlight throws/plays.

He’s typically top 5 in yards per attempt… Game Manager = very low YPA, very reliant on quick passing / dump offs and YAC by everyone else. Not at all the offenses we have seen with him.

You can hate his game but to call him a game manager that doesn’t make plays is wildly inaccurate lol.

If anything he has tried to make too many highlight plays and needs to tone it down…

You guys are listening to a guy who threw for 3k yards and a 12-18 TD-int ratio and 58% completion percentage in his 6 years in the league.

Seriously you guys crack me up.

And for all the haters I’m curious if you can post videos to support all your claims about JW? I’m willing to bet that for 2/3 of the turnovers you guy love to talk about Jameis is getting hit and had zero time.

I depend on you guys and your vast fb wisdom to educate me. Post a link let me see these plays you constantly refer to, please.

@DB55 – Simms played QB in division 1, and then in the pros. his father was a Pro QB. Tell me who else exactly qualifies as an expert source to listen to about QB play if Chris Simms doesnt? Winstons current professional QB coach, Clyde Christensen, and his Head Coach dubbed “The QB Whisperer” both have worse stats than Chris Simms does as an NFL starting QB. Its actually guys like you that crack me up.

LordC and the rest of Jameis’s fantasizer’s… I’d rather you prove to be right than the critics, I’m one . I just don’t see the play out of the investment and after 4 years a glass that has never been more than half full… meanwhile the QBs drafted as high as Jameis recently are playing like NFL QBs of the future

Lord C … Like TexBuc, I like your earlier analysis also, with 1 exception. That being 2015 wasn’t a fluke year for our run game IMO as you stated. That was Koetter’s first year here, as well as Ali Marpet’s, Donovan Smith’s and Jameis’ first years, but they had a LOT of experience around them.

The OLine that year consisted of LT Smith, LG LOGAN MANKINS, C Joe Hawley, RG Marpet & RT Gosder Cherilus. Mankins was the epitome of what an OLineman should be IMO, and it’s well-documented what a tremendous influence he had on Marpet & Smith. Cherilus that year played very well (he was ‘old’ at 31 but had been a 1st rnd pick back in 2008). Hawley was somewhat older too (27) but he was a very competent Center until his health problems the next year. All-in-all that OLine was a HUGE improvement over what Lovie had fielded in 2014.

But beyond that Jameis ran a bunch that first year (54 rushes for 213 yds & 6 TDs). Personally wish Koetter hadn’t neutered him later on far as intentional running went (Bucs did the same thing to Josh Freeman as I remember).

RBs Doug Martin & Charles Sims complemented each other very well I thought. BOTH of them averaged 4.9 YPC that year running the ball & BOTH did very well receiving out of the backfield (over 800 yds between them). Plus we had a couple of good blocking TEs in Luke Stocker & Brandon Myers to help spring the running game. And oh ya, a decent receiving group to keep the defenses off-balance (ME13, Vincent Jackson, Adam Humphries, plus Murphy, Dye & Shepard).

Koetter only had ONE job that first year: Offensive Coordinator. That offensive group had some excellent talent, and with him able to focus on solely the offense they did reasonably well I thought at moving the ball (#5 ranking in total yards with 6,014 yds). BUT … they couldn’t score consistently (sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it). Ended up with a #20 ranking in POINTS SCORED … 342 pts total (21.4 PPG average), but the 342 pts is VERY misleading IMO (just like last year). It was feast or famine (just like last year) … Bucs scored 113 pts that year in just 3 games (37.7 PPG average), and 229 pts in the remaining 13 games (17.6 PPG average). THAT’S feast or famine in the NFL. THAT should’ve been a warning sign to the Glazers & Licht when they promoted Koetter to HC & dual-hatted him as the OC. But nope, they took the easy way out.

Yeah I regret using the word “fluke” there and good points all around. Not sure why we didn’t run QB sneak more in general with a big QB like Jameis considering how bad we’ve been in short yardage running it the traditional way.

And the yards vs scoring issue with Koetter is one of the weirder established consistent trends I’ve found, since it goes back across different teams / QBs

JimmyJack … Didn’t see your ‘fluke’ post when I started writing mine (I was in & out for a bit so it took awhile to finish). The funny thing is that Joe has used that exact same word to describe the Bucs 5-game winning streak in 2016 because of how well the Bucs defense did in that stretch. In my mind, there is no such thing as a ‘fluke’ season or win/losing streak at the NFL level. There may be a lot of plain old good luck involved, but every team gets that once in awhile. Come to think of it, this year is our turn to have some more good luck.

You believe that the coaching change was the reason why the team’s running game plummeted. You also mentioned the roster, less mankins, was the same.
And that you had an issue with how Simms was used as a bellcow and slot receiver.

First , losing Mankins was a big deal. Sparing the details of how and why , happy to explain them if you want, losing mankins was the equivalent of losing 2 guys.
It’s not as simple as the team lost 1 of the 5 linemen. The o line in 15 had 2 rookies start at tackle and guard. That’s not a good idea unless you’re building for the future. The fact is they were successful. But why?

The answer is something that I have not seen anyone ask for . Without that it’s easy I guess to believe it was DK and something or other concerning him that must be the reason. The explanations I’ve read makes sense that there’s a back and forth over the word fluke to describe the 15 season. I get it.

The answer to why the team could start 2 rookies and have success is that the rookies were paired with a veteran on each side. That’s the construction , 3 vets and 2 rookies. When mankins retired the team lost him and it lost the plays he was able cover when Donovan made a mistake or didn’t know how to play a certain look. The team lost a guy who did his job and a great deal of the guy next to him.

But, there’s two rookies. Cherilus did the same for Marpet and the right side of the line. Cherilus wasn’t the starter the next year 16 it was Dotson.
So it’s not one player but two who were on the lauded line of 15 and not there in 16. I know cherilus played a role when dot went down but he was a shell of the player he was the year before. But that does bring up another change you didn’t account for. 2 of 5 changed and an injury to a starter meant another change at a key position.

Bottom line, the line was not the same as the previous year.

But let’s just pretend that the line was the same. That it has to be DK because everything or everyone was the same. Roster unchanged..
How many games did Martin play in 15? 16
Same ? For Simms? 16.

Now in 2016 , DM played in 8 games and Simms at 7.

If you don’t get it at this point…..It’s why you have to believe in a fuzzy on details and facts but ironclad and absolutely positively believe it is DK.

As for the Simms used as a bellcow , nonsense. He had 2 games with double digit carries. 13 and 14 or close…to that. In no way is that bellcow. But more to why it’s nonsense….who else was there to hand it off to?

Oh and Simms to slot..wasn’t koetter misusing him. Again nonsense. Where does this even come from anyway? Fact is injury is what prompted the move and it made sense because Simms was avg a yard and change a game rushing the ball.

I know it’s a long time ago..But it’s not freaking difficult to recall the team having to sign several running backs in season because of injuries. I say that because RB you going into the season seemed solid. A few games in and the team is bringing guys off the street. I’d offer you and anyone else a 1000. If you could name all the running backs that year. I know I can’t and it’s clear I’ve got a firmer grip on the past than the fluke or not to fluke crowd.

There are SO MANY things going against this team and SO VERY few things going for them…
Blow all the smoke you want.. This team will end this decade no different from the rest of it..
Hopefully the time will quickly come to replace the ‘Knucklehead’ and hopefully get a REAL qb that can lead his team to consistent winning and actual excite and amaze this fan base {if that is even possible}!

@Kobe … “What Lovie, Gump and Klueless had in 2016 was separation of power. Though not the cream of the crop individually, together 3 of them worked well together”.

They worked well together? Lovie knew nothing about offense, Koetter knew nothing about defense, and Gump knew nothing about … I’m sorry, can’t even finish that; it’s too easy. Their ‘separation of power’ was by default … none of them had a clue what the others were doing apparently. They ‘worked well enough together’ to end up 6-10 in 2015 and get Lovie fired.

And before you say ‘they were on the verge of turning the corner, that 2015 team lost 5 of their last 6 games. They were 5-5 before that, with an outside chance to make the playoffs at that point. But then they folded like a cheap suit. Only ONE team in those last 6 had a winning record that season: the Carolina Panthers (who trounced the Bucs in the last game of the season 38-10 as a warmup for the playoffs I guess).

Nah, they didn’t really work well together at all. It’s actually kinda humorous that Jason Licht is the worst of the three IMO … and he’s the only survivor.

Put Winston in the ring of honor tomorrow… hall of game next week! Any of you idiots that think you know more than an NFL coaching staff fighting for their multi million dollar a year job are IDIOTS!!! There was a reason he was benched. A 35 year old perineal loser gave them as much of a chance to win.

Was Dirk a good head coach NO.. I was one of the VERY few that questioned the hire from day one… but He surely knows QB play more than any of you idiots and who is F in up during the game. If Arians turns Winston into the QB all Bucs fan pray he can be ill be the first one on here to say I was wrong. Just curious who you Winston nut huggers will blame if he falls flat on his face…. all Leftwich fault … I can hear it now

The worst knucklehead play I can remember was against the Giants. Jameis was running left at about the 3 or 4 yard line with the ball in his outstretched LEFT hand with fingers pointed downward, and gets stripped of the ball, which luckily gets recovered by Mike Evans in the endzone for a TD.

Jimmy jack,
Two Other things about the 2015 run game success.
Lovie wanted to get rid of Doug Martin and Koetter convinced him to keep him.
The use of Kevin Pamphile as a swing tackle also helped the run game quite a bit.

Now Lovie probably had a hand in drafting Charles Simms , because he thought
was the next Matt Forte. Agree he was not used properly. That may have been due the fact O line starters changed. At any rate the blocking on screens was not good. After Mankins exit, Brate and Cherilous were both supposed to block for a screen and both wiffed on their blocks.

Jameis is the best QB in Buc history. So much hatred towards him that is unjust. The fake news sports media has it out for Jameis. Let the man live and play…. Report the real news! Jameis is a great guy!

Darn good example, allow me to retort if I may. First we’re talking about a game where fitz was benched so if that’s not irony idk what is, second we’re talking about a play that ended in a TD so if that’s knuckleheaded I’ll take it.

As for the play itself, the pocket breaks down after 2 seconds (problem #1), JW scrambles sees Mike in the back of the end zone but JW is past the los so as he goes to put 2 hands on the ball the defender grabs him from behind causing the fumble. To me it looked like the ball popped out when he put both hands on it but even so the defender made a play, a good play at that.

Dumb people make knucklehead mistakes on the football field. I only hope he pursues his baseball career like the mighty Tim Tebow. It does not take a lot of mental capacity to see mound, see catcher mitt, see sign, throw ball.

Buc nut when your mouth is not full of Jamies and you’ve cleaned your self up explain to me what I said was not 100% the truth. If you agree or not does not matter. The head coach fighting for his job though he had a better chance of winning without Jamies than with him. You weren’t on the field at practice or film room. Dirk sucked as a head coach bet damn sure new more than any of you idiots that Jamies at perfect. Swallow then respond.